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My Purple Hair: Violet Skies Review

Ok, get ready for this... I'll try and make this as succinct as possible... But, Ladies and Gentlemen, you are about to read: My Hair Story.

It all began, with a very normal trip to the hairdressers. I love a good ombré do, and I really wanted my hair to be as ashy as possible for Summer. BUT THEN! My bestest friend Lynzie, told me that the hairdressers had just introduced a gorgeous new range of pastel hair colours from Wella Instamatics, and so began my journey into the colourful world of purple hair....

When I left the hairdressers, the look was a lot more subtle than I thought it would be - but it was really nice!! More of a silvery, lilac than purple, it was shimmery and beautiful... It also, sadly, only lasted for about 1 or 2 washes.

So I did a little research and decided to try Violet Skies by Bleach London. I have tried some of their products before (see my review on their purple shampoo and conditioning mask - apologies for the quality of the blog images, these were taken before my blog design was put in place!) Bleach London products are generally very good in my opinion. They look really cool, they are decent sizes and they are good value for money - the Violet Skies colour is only £5.

The dye itself is quite thick, which is great as it means it's quite easy to apply and doesn't run all over your hands. The
only slightly negative side to this, is that it is quite tricky to get
out of the bottle when you get near the end... (think Tommy K
situation!)

When I first used Violet skies, I only used half the bottle. I found that this covered my shoulder length hair easily enough. I also used it as instructed, on wet hair, but I did leave it on for a bit longer than recommended (I'd say half an hour rather than 15 minutes)

Maybe if I'd used more of the dye, it would have given me a different effect, but you can see the results below:

As you can see, the look here is still very subtle and is more of a pinky / purple. I do really like this, but what I wanted was something a little bit more obvious...

I did try again with the Violet Skies dye, but this time I applied it to dry hair and left it on hour about an hour and mixed a tiny bit of the Bleach London Silver shampoo in with this. As you can see... The colour is a lot more vibrant! You can see more pictures on my New Look: Kimono by Night post. This time the colour lasted for about a week - 10 days and faded down to a nice silver / grey colour. (FYI chlorine really removes this, so swimmers may need to reapply regularly)

Again,
this is quite a cool colour, but I wanted something that I wouldn't be
worried about washing out so quickly, and that would be more silvery...

I
had seen a few girls with the hair colour that I wanted and every time I
asked them how they achieved it, the answer was the same... Purple
Shampoo!! I decided to try the Bleach London Silver Shampoo
as this came recommended (and again at only £5 a bottle, I thought, why
not give it a go!?) Again, I applied this to dry hair and left it on
for about an hour and a half. You can see the finished look in my more
recent post, What Would Florence Do.

I'm really happy with this! When it's been freshly "coloured" you can see the blue tints quite strongly, but even when the colour fades slightly (as above), it has a nice silvery, grey tone, which I love. It's also given me the confidence to try other Bleach London colours as I know they are easy to apply and will wash out so you can easily try another one! If you are looking for a more permament solution, I know that some beauty bloggers recommend going for a stronger dye colour and mixing this with conditioner to get a paler tone.

As I knew that I would be heading to Amsterdam this weekend, I have just had a quick visit to the hairdressers to have a toner applied all over my hair. I am hoping that this will blend the ombré tones together a bit better, as my root pull, is quite a warm brown at the moment.

And that concludes, my Hair Story :-)

Check out my instagram for to see the results of this! If you have any questions about this blog post, do comment below!

Ahh this is amazing! I've seen this dye in boots before but I'm so scared about bleaching! Would love to see what colour you're going next if you're confident to try the rest of the range. They do some crazy colours!